best way to deal with existing weeds in garden, more mulch?

[pointer80]

Hello all, I have a question on controlling weeds in garden, When I planted my in ground garden I started from scratch so I had to amend the soil with aged horse manure and I also got some aged alpaca manure. After I planted I spread a good layer of straw mulch but I am still getting a good amount of weeds. I have drip irrigation so hoeing is going to be hard. We have been weeding by hand but it's a full time job with our busy schedules. The garden is looking great as far as my veggies go. I was wondering if I started putting dried leaves on the garden if that would help at this point? I was going to spread them on the lawn and then run them over with my lawn tractor and shred them and bag them with the tractor. I know weeds are part of gardening but just wanted to try to do everything on my end to help out. Next year I will put a layer of newspaper down after planting. Thanks all in advance.

[bri80]

In my experience no amount of mulching stops weeds. You need to hoe. I have micro irrigation lines running through all my beds,too, and I occasionally cut one. And I mean like, maybe twice in the two years I've had the system? That's not a big deal to repair for me, so I just repair it when it happens.

I also like this tool:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002CSZ3NM/

I actually use it more than my "standing" hoe. I can weed easily around plants and irrigation lines, and it goes nearly as fast as a regular weeding hoe.

[bri80]

Also sheet mulching like with newspapers, cardboard or landscape fabric will make it much more difficult to hoe and weed efficiently, and will not stop the weeds, so bear that in mind when considering that for next year. I've tried them all, trust me!

[gumbo2176]

I deal with this by putting a nice layer of cardboard between my rows and then covering that with garden waste, yard waste and other organic material. By the time the growing season is done for the crops in the garden at that time, the cardboard has broken down very well and this is tilled under prior to planting the next set of crops.

This helps in a couple ways. First, it does keep the weeds down between the rows and it also helps preserve moisture in the soil so less watering is needed.

I get my cardboard from the local supermarkets and they are more than happy for me to take their left over boxes from stocking shelves.

[rainbowgardener]

Mulch is better at preventing weeds than killing them. Weeds that have already sprouted and come up through your existing mulch are likely to just keep coming even if you pile mulch on top of them, unless it is really a LOT. What works better for me is to weed thoroughly, get rid of every visible weed and then lay down a good layer of mulch. In my experience that really slows them down, although of course weeds are a fact of life. As the mulch gradually breaks down, eventually some weeds come back, but a lot less than there would have been.

[ElizabethB]

Hi Pointer,

You must start with a weed free garden before applying any kind of mulch.

A good foundation layer of either a heavy application of newspaper or cardboard is a great start.

My tried and true weed preventing mulch is pine straw/needles. A VERY THICK layer (12"+) applied on top of your newspaper and or cardboard will pack down to a 3" to 4" mat of tightly woven pine needles. An on ground application is good for a year. After a year just re-apply 6". With the cardboard or newspaper you will probably be good for 1 1/2 to 2 years.

Pine straw decomposes at a much slower rate than wood mulch, leaves or grass clippings. It also sucks up less nitrogen. The densely woven mat not only hinders weed germination but allows water to seep through and is great for water retention. It is also very attractive in a woodsy kind of way.

I have heard that pine straw lowers the pH and makes the soil acidic. That has never been my experience and I am a believer in regular soil test.

Good luck.

[pointer80]

Thanks for the input everyone.

[imafan26]

Weeding is about 80 percent of gardening. You just have to keep at it. Once it is under control, it is easier to maintain. But, it is very true, one year of seeding = seven years of weeding. I'm in that predicament now, and round up is my new friend. I just can't get to it all fast enough.

[Gary350]

Hello all, I have a question on controlling weeds in garden, When I planted my in ground garden I started from scratch so I had to amend the soil with aged horse manure and I also got some aged alpaca manure. After I planted I spread a good layer of straw mulch but I am still getting a good amount of weeds. I have drip irrigation so hoeing is going to be hard. We have been weeding by hand but it's a full time job with our busy schedules. The garden is looking great as far as my veggies go. I was wondering if I started putting dried leaves on the garden if that would help at this point? I was going to spread them on the lawn and then run them over with my lawn tractor and shred them and bag them with the tractor. I know weeds are part of gardening but just wanted to try to do everything on my end to help out. Next year I will put a layer of newspaper down after planting. Thanks all in advance.

This sounds exactly like me 50 years ago. I use to fight weeds every day until I learned how to not have weeds and I never mulch.

Buy a garden tiller that is not very wide, my tiller is 22" wide. Get an early start tilling your garden to kill all the grass and weeds. I till the soil about 2 times per week to kill new plants that grow from seeds. Each time I till it stirs more seeds to the surface where heat from the sun make them grow. Next time I till it kills new plant and stirs more seed to the surface. In a few days I have more weeds till again to kill them and stir more seeds to the surface. Soon I will have made most of the seed germinate and I killed them with the tiller. Now that most of the seeds are gone time to plant the garden. Make sure plant rows are 10" to 12" wider than the tiller this gives you 5 to 6 inches on each side of the tiller to run the tiller between rows to kill weeds and grass and not damage your garden plants. Be very careful tilling between small garden plants not to damage your plants.

Use your garden hoe like a road grader blade drag it along the surface to scrap off the small tender weeds. Don't worry about weeds until they are 2" tall they scrap off much easier. No need to chop and dig at weeds with the hoe that is too much work and too slow. If you miss a few weeds don't worry they get bigger then they are much easier to see and much easier to grab by hand to pull up if you can not get to then easy with the hoe.

Run the tiller between each row pretty fast just to break the soil surface do not dig deep you only want to scrap the surface to leave a loose layer of soil on top. Compact soil will wick water to the surface where wind and sun evaporates it, the loose soil on the surface acts like shade and does the same thing as mulch. The loose surface soil will dry out and no seeds will germinate. Mulch is not free plus it take, time, work, money to put mulch on the garden. Cultivating the garden with the tiller is 95% less work than mulch I can till the surface of by 35'x60' garden in 8 minutes it will take you several hours to cover 35'x60' with mulch. How much money does mulch cost? You already have soil in the garden use it for mulch.

Weeding is less than 5% of gardening. I planted my garden then we traveled, vacationed, over and over for 2 months, some times we were gone for 2 weeks. My garden did fine without me being there every day. After being gone to Florida 1 week, gone to Michigan 2 weeks, gone other places 4 to 6 days each time, all I had to do when we returned was a fast walk through the garden with the tiller 2 times in 2 months and weeds were gone.

[applestar]

I use a medium handle Japanese hand hoe and short-handled horse/dog shedding comb (thin metal band held in a loop) to weed around the plants in the garden. Long handled 5 inch stirrup/action hoe for path and wider areas.

[wisconsindead]

I am currently int he Bri80 camp. I have been using hay/straw but realized that was the source of some grass, the bad type that spreads underground. I removed all straw mulch and have been weeding regularly. I now use a hoe as much as I can and really try to stay on top of things. I did pretty bad just with weeds my first two years so I am trying my best to clean my garden. Any perennial weed will be dealt with. I am in my third year of gardening. I also try to keep any part of the garden not in use covered with plywood or black plastic. My new plot, which I tilled last October and kept covered until spring has hardly any weeds in it because I used that plastic and weed free compost. It should be easily kept weed free as long as I use a hoe regularly and weed free compost. I like mulch because it encourages more bugs and has moisture retention but it isn't compatible with a hoe and I am sick of dealing with weeds.

[jasonvanorder]

I have 4 raised beds that are 4'x10' and a 25'x50' in ground garden and only spend at most an hour a night weeding and have very few weeds. I can go thru and hoe most of the garden in about 10 minutes then take some time to get right up under the plants by hand. The beds are super easy to keep clear. The strange thing is I put in the beds new this spring and have volunteer tomatoes coming up in one of them.

[bri80]

With regards to hoeing, if you always cut weeds back before they flower, after a couple years you'll have very few weed seeds in your garden. Some will still travel in by air, but that's unavoidable no matter what your strategy.

This strategy can also kill difficult weeds that grow back from tubers/roots, as long as you keep cutting it back, it will eventually die. The key is consistency, just spend a few minutes every week and get them all. The more you do this, the easier it gets. Like jasonvanorder and applestar said, you can use a large hoe for the paths/larger sections, and a small hand hoe for getting in around the plants.

Also, after struggling with a "traditional" hoe for a long time, and never figuring out how to use it efficiently, my world was changed when I discovered the "hula hoe" design. Mine is a little different from a regular hula hoe, in that it has a flexible head that moves back and forth as you work it. But the "open" head design makes it so much easier to use.

Keeping good, fluffy soil helps, too. If your soil is tough and clumpy it can be harder to hoe, but then, you probably should figure out how to fix that.

Also no matter what tool you use, get it sharpened! A dull hoe is frustrating to use.

[imafan26]

I went back to work because I needed medical coverage, so I just don't have as much time to spend in the garden. I used to schedule time in the garden. A different garden on a different day. Most of that time was for weeding. Even working, I used to have a goal of pulling a bucket of weeds and carry a plastic bag with salt in it to drop the snails and slugs in. Now, I barely have time to water the garden in the morning. I have been getting behind on the weeding and so now I am using round up since some of the weeds have deep roots and don't die by just cutting off the tops. I have started to lay weedblock down in my backyard since I don't have much grass there anyway. The grass that is there survives on its own. I have mostly potted plants around the vegetable garden and the weed block helps slow down the weeds growing between them. Water here is very expensive and I have to pay sewer charges for water that ends up in my yard, so I have reduced the grass down to only what the HOA requires. I have even had to let some of my plants die because I could only keep the ones that could survive on a lot less water. The most water needy are in the back yard. They get watered every day, everything else pretty much lives on rain and occassional watering since I still have to fix the sprinkler system.
The weeds that do survive are pretty nasty California grass, nut sedge, kylinga, bindweed, bitter melon, baby's tears, and other grassy weeds. If they are just mowed and the roots are not killed, they just come back.

I have had some luck using cardboard and newspaper to keep weeds down. It just does not cover a large area and while it will kill sprouted weeds, it does not kill seeds or roots. After about 3 months the nutsedge will grow through the newspaper, but it does give the veggies time to establish so they can compete better. I am using a non-woven weed blocker, it works better than the plastic or woven weedcloth, the nut sedge has a harder time getting through that. I put cardboard and newspaper under the weedblock as added protection. It is just hard to stake through cardboard so I have to use pots to anchor it down.

[rainbowgardener]

The strange thing is I put in the beds new this spring and have volunteer tomatoes coming up in one of them.

Did you put some compost in the beds? Everywhere I put my compost down, I get bunches of volunteer tomatoes. I think it is very strange - I don't get any other weeds from it. I get bunches of volunteer tomatoes and the very occasional volunteer potato or pepper or squash, and nothing else.

All that hoeing still sounds like a lot of work and it doesn't work for me. I don't plant in rows. I plant very densely in raised beds with lots of companion planting and intercropping. I think the density helps keep weeds down as well as the mulching. I use mixed green and brown mulch -- fall leaves and grass clippings, straw and pulled weeds, etc. I don't get weeds from it and it is very effective at suppressing weeds.

[wisconsindead]

Speaking of volunteers, does anyone know of a list of seeds that do not survive freezing temperatures? I would assume freezing would kill at least some varieties...?

[bri80]

I think for most relevant plants here, the opposite may be true. A lot of seeds need a period of cold/freezing to break dormancy. This is how the species has adapted to survive winter - no point dropping seeds to have them germinate that same year, right before winter hit, and kills your offspring. If the seed doesn't germinate till after a cold period, it's much more likely to remain dormant until the next spring.

[jasonvanorder]

The strange thing is I put in the beds new this spring and have volunteer tomatoes coming up in one of them.

Did you put some compost in the beds? Everywhere I put my compost down, I get bunches of volunteer tomatoes. I think it is very strange - I don't get any other weeds from it. I get bunches of volunteer tomatoes and the very occasional volunteer potato or pepper or squash, and nothing else.

All that hoeing still sounds like a lot of work and it doesn't work for me. I don't plant in rows. I plant very densely in raised beds with lots of companion planting and intercropping. I think the density helps keep weeds down as well as the mulching. I use mixed green and brown mulch -- fall leaves and grass clippings, straw and pulled weeds, etc. I don't get weeds from it and it is very effective at suppressing weeds.

Yeah the fill is a mix of topsoil composted yard waste and a touch of sand to keep it from clumping too much. Most of them I pulled because I have way too many tomato plants already (18). I left 1 by the carrots just because the little bugger went from nothing to bearing fruit in like the blink of an eye.

[jal_ut]

Lots of good ideas. You just have to try some things. Hope you find something that works for you. One thing for sure, your garden plants will do much better if they don't have to compete with weeds.
Hoe, hoe, hoe.

[pointer80]

Thanks all, Some great info as usual.

[Taiji]

80 % of my garden work is watering.

One good thing about living in an arid zone is that weeds are less of a problem than in other places. And, I don't water overhead which helps. If I watered the whole thing from overhead I would have a lot of weeds. Now we are in the southwestern monsoon season so more weeds will sprout up in the garden aisles. But, not a big deal!

I have lots of tomatoes volunteer every year from the last year. They almost always turn out to be cherry tomatoes. I leave them if they happen to be in a place where there's some space for them. Even put little stakes in for them.

[ID jit]

Sounds like brute force time. I did this once in a heavily weeded garden and it worked out well. Weeds were so bad the plants were dead or close to it.

Went down the rows carefully with a string trimmer. Laid 20' x 2' strips really heavy duty, water permeable, weed supressing, landscape fabric down the rows on the chopped up weeds Held the fabric in place with bricks. This decreased the hand weeding to just around the plants. After the hand weeding around the plants I put down several inches of clean grass clippings.

After a couple of weeks, I lifted the fabric and went after the weeds that popped back up again between the rows with a string trimmer again and put the fabric back down and repeated the head weeding and mulching.

Have been using the fabric and clean grass clippings since.

My thinking is that the grass clippings may be stealing some N and H2O, but it is far less then the unchecked weeds would be stealing. Have also found the worms seem to love the grass clippings and leave a lot of casting behind.

[jal_ut]

You have received loads of ideas from the group. One thing for sure: Your plants will do much better if you can keep the weeds out! Have a great garden!

[Gary350]

Seeds in the soil causes weeds. No seeds, no weeds.

[gumbo2176]

Speaking of volunteers, does anyone know of a list of seeds that do not survive freezing temperatures? I would assume freezing would kill at least some varieties...?

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is designed to keep their massive cache of seeds at -18C which is the equivalent of -0.4F. So it would appear freezing seeds at least as low as that temperature has little to no effect on them.

[rainbowgardener]

Seeds in the soil causes weeds. No seeds, no weeds.

well sort of.... weed seeds are also blown in, float in with rain runoff, are carried in on the feet of birds and other critters, etc... Also many weeds spread by underground runners and can spread long distances that way.

Weeds are ubiquitous!!

[ID jit]

After several years of heavy duty landscape fabric and clean grass clipping mulch, I have very few weeds to pull.

Volunteers from the compost pile, mostly cherry tomatoes and sometime a squash or two
Crab grass, which I am pretty sure is blown in and isn't that bad to deal with.
Generic, unidentified weed, pretty sure it is a blow in too, local area has a lot of it.

The way I have things set up, only have to weed a narrow strip between where I stop mulching an inch or so before the plants. Once the seeds germinates and the plants grow a free true leaves, I mulch right up to and around the plants with 2" - 3" of clean grass clipping and overlap that onto the strips of fabric. Have also found the the grass clipping tend to stay dry on top which is good for keeping low hanging green beans dry and off the soil. Still feels a little weird mulching beets, carrots, radishes (after thinning) and onions this way, but I haven't seen any ill effect yet.

After I pulled the lettuce from between the tomato plants, it took me less then 10 minuets to weed the 2 20' rows (2 rows of 4 spaced 4' apart).

[jal_ut]

Weeds are a fact of life. If you are going to garden you will need to spend some time weeding. Plan on it. Here the weed seeds come on the wind, they come in the irrigation water, and some of course just grow up and bear seed in my garden because I didn't get them pulled. Then there are those weeds with the persistent roots that even if the top growth is cut off the root will send up more growth. To get these, you actually have to get all the root up and toss it in the garbage can. Yes gardeners are likely to spend more time weeding than any other activity.